Nanny and the Blackhawk Wilderness
by Shari Skye
Summary: An AU of the second season episode "Back to Nature." The Professor stays home to give the lecture for his colleague while Nanny causes a stir at the camp site.


**Disclaimer: I do not own _Nanny and the Professor_ or these characters and I make no profit from them.**

**This is just a one shot, an AU to the second season episode _Back to Nature_. I can leave it right here or write a sequel about their second campout. I'm kind of conflicted because sometimes these things are left best to just imagine the sequel.**

**Nanny and the Blackhawk Wilderness**

Several tries at getting the professor to go on a campout finally proved unfruitful when they were packing the car and Professor Lawrence walked up and mimed his need to have Professor Everett deliver a lecture over the weekend in his stead since he had contracted laryngitis.

The children's disappointment however seemed to have softened their father up a bit. When Nanny offered to take the children on her own and leave him at home to look over his material on the Blackhawk Wilderness and its possible uses and to deliver Professor Lawrence's lecture, Professor Everett gave in and skeptically let his housekeeper take his car and leave him with Arabella for the weekend.

As they drove away he felt a smidge guilty and lonely in the house on his own. He'd get a dinner date for the evening. Never really being low on interested parties, even a last minute date was easy to find. Oh that's it, he would call up that lovely brunette secretary of the science department. She was new in town, only been at the university for about 3 weeks. She had a soft seductive sounding voice and from the way she'd looked at him, he knew she was interested. He also knew that the wife of his buddy Ed was a friend of hers and would have her number.

It took him all of 6 minutes on the phone to get her number and 5 minutes after that he had her on the phone and dinner was all set. He made reservations at a restaurant and was due to pick her up at 6:30. They would have pre-dinner drinks at 6:45 and dinner at 7 p.m. He had it all figured out, so why wasn't he happy?

He delivered the lecture and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to concentrate on the information about the Blackhawk Wilderness. That is while his family was actually at the Blackhawk Wilderness. He wondered if they were ok. Would Nanny be able to get the tent up on her own with the kids? What if one of them wandered off? What if they forgot matches and couldn't get a fire going? Had they packed a flashlight? What was with all this curiosity anyway? He hadn't wanted to go and was glad to be left at home right? But even as he assured himself that he was exactly where he'd wanted to be, he remembered how bright the children's faces were as Nanny had backed the car out of the driveway and left. In her he could read the disappointment. That is what had stirred his feeling of guilt.

He knew how perfectly she handled the children and that they were not bored on the drive. He thought of her singing rounds with the kids or playing "I Spy" as they drove along. He knew the drive would have been a fairly warm one since it was much more like summer now than spring. He wondered if they had gone for a swim before setting up camp. Oh this was ridiculous, Harold pushed thoughts of his family from his mind and began to go over the materials that he had.

Six o'clock rolled around before he knew it and he went upstairs to change out of his jeans, to shower and find a suit to impress his dinner date. As planned he pulled up at 6:30 sharp. He went to the door to find Lynette the beautiful brunette ready to go, he walked her to the car and opened the door for her. She looked exquisite in her short white evening dress and he wasn't sure why his thoughts returned to Nanny and the children. What were they doing now? It was just about dusk. As he shut the car door and walked around to the driver side of the car he shook his head as if he could shake the thoughts from his mind, he couldn't.

The restaurant was lovely, quiet with just the right amount of soft music playing. His date was perfect, she moved in the same circles as he did, knew most of the same people, she was intelligent but without a doctorate that would cause her to be challenge him as the intellectual superior. He should have the feeling of being on _cloud 9_ and yet all he could think was, 'What are Nanny and the kids having for dinner?'

His lovely porterhouse steak was turning acrid in his mouth, while his date praised the tender steak that melted in her mouth. Even her sultry tone of voice was not enough to rouse Harold from his wonderings about his family. As the waiter came to clear the plates from the table he looked confused and questioningly at the Professor who still had almost a full steak on his plate. "I'm sorry Andre, perhaps you'd better wrap that up for me huh?"

"Yes sir, Professor Everett." The waiter answered and walked away shaking his head.

"Harold, are you feeling alright? You seem so distracted."

"Oh I'm sorry Lynette, please forgive me, I guess I am feeling a bit off tonight."

"I see, well then you can just take me home after this, and I'll take a rain check on dancing."

"Oh no, I couldn't just take a lovely lady like you home right after dinner." His good manners made him say it but his heart wasn't in the declaration.

She touched his arm, "Really Harold, it's alright," then she winked, "just let me claim that rain check soon huh?"

He smiled, "Alright." Thank God, he was off the hook, he didn't have to suffer through anymore of the pretense to a good time.

He took Lynette home, he saw her to the door but did not go in. He feigned a headache and returned to his car. He should have just taken advantage of the solitude tonight and watched a movie at home. He so rarely got to do that.

But when he walked in the door he was instantly aware of just how alone he was in the house. No coffee was brewed and waiting, no scrumptious goodies to accompany the coffee, and finally no Nanny to fill him in on how the day went for the children. Now a movie didn't seem so enticing, now nothing seemed particularly great. He sat down at his desk and looked again at the large amount of information he'd brought home. He read and studied until his head fell on his desk.

When he woke in the morning, his neck hurt, his back hurt, and his head hurt. Staying home hadn't been such a great idea after all. He didn't feel at all like making his own breakfast so he went to the favored diner near the university for breakfast.

The waitress was bright and cheery but Professor Everett didn't feel bright and cheery, he felt deserted and grumpy. He just wanted to fill his stomach left empty by little or no dinner the night before. He needed to pull himself out of this slump before Nanny and the children returned this afternoon or he'd never hear the end of it.

"Here you are Professor, Denver omelet, crisp hashbrowns, and an English muffin. Can I get you anything else?"

"Uh.. No thank you."

Harold found some jam on the table, lathered up his toasted English muffin and dug into the egg concoction. His thoughts turned once again to his family and he wondered what they might be doing for breakfast. He was sure that Nanny had it all figured out as usual. How on earth did she manage to stay so on top of things? She was certainly the perfect domestic. She was always pleasant without being too overzealous. She never slept in or missed an appointment. She often did extra things for him without ever being asked as if she were just tuned into him. Bringing him things at work which he'd forgotten at home or heating milk when he couldn't sleep or even just bringing him a warm cocktail in the evenings when his day had been particularly rough.

As he sat there he realized just how very much he wished he had gone on that camping trip. He acknowledged (only in his own mind, he'd never tell her or the kids) that it was a mistake to stay at home. He should have just told his colleague that he had plans with his family that couldn't be broken. Lawrence could have gotten Wilkins or Eldridge to give the lecture for him easily.

Well they could go again. The kids would be ecstatic if he just told them that he felt guilty for making them go on their own and he really wanted to give them a family weekend with their father. Yes, that is what he would do.

After breakfast he went home and tried to do some of the things that he'd been putting off. His late wife would have called it a honey-do list. Nanny had asked him to prune the large shrub in the back yard that was making it hard to get to the faucet and hose. Hal had been asking him to hang a shelf in his and Butch's room, that was too heavy for Hal to hang on his own. Prudence wanted another balloon like the others he'd bought her that had eventually burst, and Butch wanted his tennis racquet restrung so that Professor Clarendon could give him some tips. So he pruned the shrub, hung the shelf, went to a few shops until he found just the right balloon for Prudence and dropped off Butch's racquet at the sports shop.

Now when they returned home he could give them all some kind of peace offering after sending them off on their own. He'd show all the interest he felt about their trip and genuine remorse for sending them off without him. Then he would ease out the offer to take them back in a week or two. In the mean time he'd go back to studying the information on the wilderness area and deciding what information would be fed into the computer.

They were back before he knew it. They stored a lot of their gear in the garage and carried in the rest. They left most of it in the hall by the front door as they rushed in to see their father and tell them all about the glorious camping trip, while Nanny took the cooler to the kitchen to unload any unused food back into the fridge.

"Dad! Dad! Where are you?"

"Hey kids, how'd it go?" The Professor stepped out of his den to great his children.

"Daddy, Daddy! We missed you so much." He scooped his young daughter up into his arms and received her ready kiss on his cheek.

"I missed you too darling." And he kissed her back on her little cheek.

"Well, tell me all about it?" he stepped back into his den allowing the children to follow. He sat in the chair in the corner and with Prudence on his lap and the boys sitting on each arm of the chair. "Were you able to get the tent up ok?"

"Gee, we didn't have to Dad."

"You didn't?"

"Gosh no Dad, the guys out there did it all for us?"

"Guys? What guys?"

"Oh there were a lot of guys camping out there for the weekend too. Only they had been there since the night before we got there."

"Yeah Dad, those guys know a lot about camping and stuff and they showed us lots of stuff."

"And just how did you get to know these 'guys' ?" It hadn't occurred to him that his family might go to a spot where other campers were.

"That's easy Daddy, when we got there it was really hot, and Nanny had told us to have our swim suits on under our clothes, that way when we got there we could go in the water first thing."

"I see," he replied to his daughter touching her nose.

The boys continued off where their sister left off. "So when we got there and got the stuff out of the car we were too hot to do anything else and Nanny said we should go swimming first and then set up the camp later."

"Even Nanny went swimming Dad, she's a pretty good swimmer too." For some reason this thought disturbed the professor. It hadn't occurred to him that he'd have missed out on Nanny swimming along with the kids. Oh well, he shook it off and let the kids continue.

Butch picked up this time, "It was kind of funny Dad, almost as soon as Nanny got to the pond we were swimming in all these guys started showing up and Nanny gathered us up and told us we should call her Mom when the guys were around."

"What?" The professor seemed fairly confused by this but Hal was able to explain a little better.

"Yeah Dad," Hal let out a little chuckle. "You wouldn't believe how Nanny looks in a two-piece bathing suit. They guys thought she was really groovy, and I think she figured having 3 kids would scare them off a bit. It sorta worked. They didn't put the moves on her or anything, but they sure spent lots o' time with us." Hall laughed outright then.

Nanny in a two-piece bathing suit? The professor's mind started imagining like crazy. "Just how many 'guys' were there?"

"Four of them dad, and man were they a lot of fun. It was so funny, Nanny said we needed to set up the tent, and they were fighting over which of them were going to do it for her. We just got to lay on the ground and dry off in the sun while they put up our tent, and made a fire pit for us and even started the fire. They took Hal and me fishing, we caught loads of fish too, they showed us how to clean them and then Nanny cooked them all up, ours and theirs."

"Hmm, what else did they do?"

"They took us on a hike Daddy, they showed us rabbit holes and birds' nests and taught us about bugs and stuff."

"What about bugs?"

"Gee Dad, they taught us about what kind of bugs to eat if you didn't have food, and what kinds of plants to eat and stuff."

"And just how did they know all that?" for some reason these 'guys' kind of got under his skin and he hadn't even met them.

"Gee Dad, one of them is in the army, he said he was a survival instructor."

"Oh," he answered. Just his luck that his family had run into this crowd. Well it had been his own decision. They had all wanted him to go, and quite badly if he remembered correctly. He wished with all his might that he could go back and live that moment over again. He knew that he would not have opted to stay at home.

"Ya know Dad," Hal said, "it was actually kind nice calling her 'Mom' this weekend. I do miss Mom and haven't forgot her or anything, but it felt sort of good to pretend like we had a Mom again."

"Yeah, and it was really fun to watch the guys' faces when we said it, they flinched almost every time." Butch chuckled at that and the Professor took a sort of strange pleasure in the fact that his children had kept the predatory males in check.

"Well I was thinking, before I make my recommendations about the Blackhawk Wilderness, perhaps you'd like to go back for another campout?"

"Yay! Yay!" they all yelled in unison.

Then Nanny appeared in the doorway. "Well, I think you three had better get those things in the hall put away and then get washed up before dinner. I know I'm looking forward to an early night in my own bed."

The Professor looked up and if he hadn't been sitting in his chair he might have fallen down. Was she really standing in the doorway to his den in a two-piece bathing suit? His eyes traveled over her and he felt as though he were in shock!

"Daddy!" Prudence seemed incensed that he wasn't listening to her.

He looked down at his daughter. "What Prudence darling?"

"I asked if you would help me carry my things up the stairs." She told him almost exasperated at him.

"Oh sure honey," he answered and looked back up at his housekeeper who was completely clothed and looking at him in a rather confused manner.

He would have shaken his head except that he didn't want to appear too obvious that he was seeing things.

Later that night while brushing their teeth Butch asked Hal, "Did you see how Dad was looking at Nanny tonight?"

"Yeah, the same way those guys on the camp out were looking at her."

"Yeah that's what I thought too." Then as the thought sunk in both boys smiled at each other, rinsed their mouths and went to bed.

The End


End file.
